How could quota system be based on racial composition? This is indeed a great country with flip-flop switching of policies within a week.

In the first week of May, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad said that the government was prepared to consider abrogating the quota system to avert a brain drain of non-bumiputra high achievers.

Then according to a report in The Sun on May 11, Education Minister Musa Mohamad said that the government was prepared to increase the bumiputra-intake quota in public universities from the present 55 percent to 66 percent, the logic of which being, the present quota was based on racial composition then of 55:45 but the bumiputra's composition had today increased to 66 percent.

Musa then said that his ministry would welcome 'feedback' from "those who always talk about the quota and what they have to say about this".

The first thing that comes to mind then is to let's all get prepared for the brain drain to further intensify! Perhaps then, the racial composition figures might over the next five years change to 80:20 for the bumiputra quota to be further revised from 66 percent to 80 percent.

Hopefully one day not too far into the future, it may well be 99 percent and there would not be any more controversy about the quota system to give the Education Ministry a headache!

To the non-bumiputras, what is the big stake in an educational system that places a greater premium on quota for quota's sake, measured as it is by population figures, rather than educational standards especially in this world that has become a global village in which intellectual capital is pivotal?

What is the big stake in a quota system that, based on racial composition, has even lost its raison d'etre ?

The purpose of affirmative policies 30 years ago was to correct the privations of the bumiputra target group blamed on colonial policies that, if uncorrected, will widen the gap between the races further.

I expect that it was for expedience only that the 55:45 quota ratio based on racial composition was adopted then for levelling the playing field. The quota was and ought not to be permanently measured by racial composition or else it will logically lead to the absurd result that even if the 'playing field' were levelled, the quota of (say) 66:34 as mooted by Musa would still be maintained because racial composition justifies so; with the quota forever dependent on racial composition!

Article 153 of the Constitution providing for Malay privileges that was specifically formulated by the founders of our Constitution to abridge fundamental liberties [such as Article 8, on the entitlement to equal protection before the law and Article 12 that upholds rights to education of all citizenry] was justified, and arguably justifiable on grounds of correcting the imbalance caused by historical impact of colonial policies on cultural, social and economic circumstances of the bumiputras.

The moment the rationale of the quota (emanating from these privileges) shifts its base and rationale from that of correcting imbalance to that of a base and rationale structured on racial composition, it becomes no more an affirmative programme to help the disadvantaged but a racist one in direct contravention of Articles 8 and 12 of the Federal Constitution and Article 26 of the Universal Treaty of Human Rights.

Today, Malaysians' support of the affirmative policies in specific reference to the quota system to correct the imbalance have been purchased at a high cost, to a name a few:

1) Alienation of many non-bumiputra youths because more often than not, educational privations cut across class rather than racial lines. (There are many poor Chinese, Indians and others who though are top scorers have no equal and cheap access to public tertiary institutions).

2) The brain drain and the drain on foreign exchange when our students go overseas by the droves; and

3) Decline in the accreditation standards of our public tertiary institutions.

Now more than ever, when the nation's crme de la crme could not secure admission to public tertiary institutions by reason of this quota, it signifies something must be wrong and it becomes incumbent upon the Education Ministry to articulate unambiguous, explicit and focused qualification criteria for admission decisions that are fair to those both within and outside the target group and communicate these requisite criteria clearly in a manner defensible in law and logic to the public and consistent with the best of national instead of sectional interest.

Instead, what do we have here? Hello, a suggestion - no, a paradigm shift - of criteria from "correcting imbalance" to indices of racial composition, to flame further the fires of outrage and alienation! Thank you - but no thank you. I rest my case.